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THE!NEWSLETTER!!

Number!6! Summer!2015!Southern!Connecticut!State!University,!New!Haven!

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CHAIR’S REMARKS: Dear friends of the World Languages and Literatures department, Welcome to our annual newsletter in its 6th edition! In our newsletter, we usually review all the important events that took place during the year and highlight successes and challenges that the Department has experienced. This year’s newsletter starts on a sad note. In April we lost Reinaldo Alaya. Reinaldo was a student in our programs, he worked in our Language Labs and he tutored our students. Above all Reinaldo was a friend to many of our colleagues. His death was unexpected and we mourn him with all our hearts. Overall, this academic year has been marked with multiple challenges, many of which we have been able to overcome and others need more work. One of the most significant issues that the Department faced this year is the change to its basic language program. We are currently working on providing special accommodations to transfer students so that they can be eased into the study of world languages. Our language sections have worked extensively on curricular changes. The most significant accomplishments are:

B Under the coordination of Dr. Luisa Piemontese, the Spanish basic language programs have experienced an almost revolutionary transformation. The majority of 100-level classes are now taught using Silent Way approach to language teaching, where instructors remain largely silent throughout the lesson while guiding students through language discovery. Many of 101 Spanish classes are thematic and focus on the study of cultural topics such as music, art, sports, and many others.

B The Spanish section has developed a minor in Medical Spanish. It will be available to all students starting in the Fall 2015!

B Congratulations to Professor Carlos Arboleda on celebrating the 25th anniversary of the summer program in Salamanca! Over 600 students have travelled with Dr. Arobleda to Spain over the years! Dr. Arboleda and the city of Salamanca are organizing a celebration of this remarkable jubilee in July. Among the attendees will be Dean Breese and Erin Heidkamp, Director of Office of International Education. Our Language Lab Director, Dr. Jian Wu, will be recording the festivities.

B The Italian curriculum now includes two great classes: “Italian Food Culture” and “Italian

Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they

are going -!Rita Mae Brown-

Department)of)World)Languages)and)Literatures)

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Cities and Culture”. Both classes are taught in English and partially in Italian and focus on different aspects of Italian culture. Dr. Palma will be taking a group of students to Tuscany for summer study abroad this July. We wish her and the students safe travels!

B The French section has grown dramatically under Dr. Luke Eilderts’ leadership and now has 18 majors and 30 minors! This summer Dr. Eilderts will travel to Paris with a group of students who will have an opportunity to take classes and familiarize themselves with the French culture. Bon voyage!

B Dr. Christine Dombrowski has led our German program to further expansion. Students of German continue to participate in the German exchange program. Professor Annemarie Geibel has continued leading the German Club this year and treating students to the wonders of Austrian baking!

It is unfortunate that we have experienced attrition of several languages this year, including Russian and Arabic. Starting in the Fall of 2015, we will have alternating patters for offering 100 level courses in less frequently taught languages. Chinese, Hebrew, and Japanese will be offered at 100 level during the fall semesters of odd years; whereas Latin and Portuguese will be offered in the fall semesters of even years. This year we have celebrated many of our students as they have been nominated for a variety of awards. Heartfelt congratulations go to Kamaya Sinclair, recipient of F.J. Zilli Award; Alessandra Paglia, nominated for Frank Salemme Award; Hafssa Chbini, nominated for Marguerite Fortier Smirnoff Memorial Endowed Scholarship; Hollyanne Cairo, nominated for Dominick and Maria Mastriannin Memorial Scholarship; Robin Stanley, nominated for The Douglas I. and Mary L. Relyea Scholarship; Ashley Gibey, nominated for WLL Retiree Award; Steve DeFrancesco, nominated for Therese C. Petto Scholarship; Deanna Scotto, nominated for Rita and Ubaldo Tamburi Scholarship for Italian Studies major; Charles Schadlich, nominated for The Rebecca Ward ’69 Scholarship; and to Abigain Wiegand, Ahsley Gilbey, Jesse Gillis, recipients of the German Book Award. Both of our Masters programs - the MA in Romance Languages and the MS in TESOL - have successfully passed prioritization review of the School of Graduate Studies. The MS in TESOL program was recommended for further development. The MA in Romance languages program will be supported at the current level. We have awarded a total of 17 graduate degrees this year and accepted 19 students in the MS in TESOL. In the MA in Romance Languages, we graduated 6 students and accepted five students so far. Two of our former MS in TESOL students Jessica Somerville and Sophia Diamantis have been accepted into Ph.D programs at the University of Ohio and University of Wisconsin, respectively. We had several exciting lectures on campus this year. Faculty in the TESOL program put together a series of linguistics talks. These include a visit from Dr. John McWhorter – a prominent linguist who is currently teaching at Columbia University; Dr. Tammy Slater – an applied linguist working in the area of Systemic Functional Linguistics; Dr. Han Ye – a specialist in second language acquisition from Washington Jefferson University. Dr. Lisa Vitale organized Strong Women, Strong Voices event dedicated to International Women’s Day. Dr. Sarah Rolfe Prodan of Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto and Dr. Erin Larkin, our own professor of Italian presented at this mini-conference.!!Extraordinary efforts of Dr. Ruben Pelayo and Resha Cardone have brought to us a commemorative

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conference in honor of the great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I thank Luisa Piemontese, Carlos Torre, Miaowei Weng, Carlos Arboleda, Deane Hetric, Tricia Lin, and David Pettigrew who provided exceptional personal accounts of their reading of Gabriel Garcia Marquez works. Special guest speakers at the conference were Aníbal González of Yale University and Edith Grossman of Columbia University. I would like to end this year’s remarks expressing my most sincere gratitude to all my colleagues and students who have been essential to every endeavor World Languages and Literatures Department has undertaken! Our discussions, meetings, advisement sessions, and even arguments have made this Department stronger and my work as the chairperson enjoyable. Dr. Resha Cardone will be chairing the WLL Department starting in August 2015. I wish her strength and wisdom in all her pursuits on behalf of our faculty, students, and programs. Elena Schmitt, Chairperson Department of World Languages and Literatures

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A grand celebration event was held on July 15, 2015, in the City Hall of Salamanca, Spain, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the SCSU-Salamanca Spain Program (1990-2015). The Mayor of Salamanca hosted the celebration to honor the remarkable achievement of the program in the past 25 years under the leadership of professor Arboleda. Dean Breese, Erin Heidkamp, and Jian Wu joined Professor Arboleda, the colleagues of Colegio De España and our students in this jubilant and memorable event.

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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE HELD The first international conference, held on April 17 at SCSU to pay tribute to García Márquez, "Literature Across Disciplines: Gabriel García Márquez, Translation & Criticism", was a huge success, thanks to the excellent work of Dr. Pelayo, the conference director. Research on Gabriel García Márquez is at the center of Dr. Pelayo’s lifelong scholarly work. (He published the essay "the Keys to Read One Hundred Years of Solitude" in December of 2014, and is working on a secured publication about "Love and Death" in García Márquez's 41 short stories. He is also working on another book on Gabriel García Márquez with a focus on cinema.) ! Edith Grossman, a world-renowned translator attended the conference and delivered the closing speech, while Aníbal González, a Yale University professor, presented a fragment of his latest book project. Dr. Bette S. Bergeron, the Provost and Academic Vice President of SCSU, made the opening remarks. The program included personal accounts of how eight panelists entered the world of García Márquez: from Russia to Guatemala, China to Colombia, Taiwan to the United States, and from marriage-and-divorce to a home library where One Hundred Years of Solitude was seemingly, as if in a magic-realist world, hard to find. Professors Arboleda and Zúniga added a folk-touch with a sample dance of a "vallenato," a musical genre very dear to García Márquez. The video of the conference produced by Jake Grubman is available on YouTube at http://tinyurl.com/scsu-gabriel. As Edie Grossman put it, "It's a beautiful record of an outstanding day."

Dr. Pelayo is planning to hold another conference of a similar scope on April 17, 2016. In his own words, “it was truly a rewarding experience to work together with such a fine group of intellectuals to honor the life of one of the world's best writers.” !

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This academic year saw the addition of a new full-time colleague, program growth, French club events, and another successful summer program in Paris. The French section welcomed Dr. Nichole Gleisner to the World Languages and Literatures Department this past year. Dr. Gleisner received her Ph.D. from Duke University with a dissertation titled “Toward a Poetics of Witness: Apollinaire, Cendrars and the French Soldier- Poets of the First World War.” An accomplished translator, Dr. Gleisner not only brings her expertise in French literature and culture to the section and department but also her tireless energy, for which her colleagues and students are very grateful. In the spring she lead our advanced undergraduates and masters students in a fascinating exploration of the Middle Ages in the seminar “Middle Ages: Romance and Faith.” One of the course projects included the creation of an original book, where students took inspiration from some of the illuminated manuscripts of the time period. One of the highlights of the year was the acceptance of the French program into the French National Honor Society, Pi Delta Phi.!Quoting the organization’s website, Pi Delta Phi is, “the oldest academic honor society for a modern foreign language in the U.S.,” and “was founded as a departmental honor society at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1906.” Today, there are more than 370 chapters. A heartfelt thank you goes out to the Dean of Arts and Sciences, Steven Breese, as well as the Department of World Languages and Literatures for their support, and we look forward to welcoming Dr. Eileen Angelini (Canisius College in Buffalo, NY), regional president of Pi Delta Phi, as we officially inaugurate this new chapter here at Southern in the fall. Stay tuned for more information!

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The French Club had many events this year, from its weekly meetings to crêpe tastings. In addition to these social and cultural events, it also completed a very successful school supply drive for a school and orphanage in Haiti. The club also had t-shirts made in the colors of the Haitian flag with the motto of the national coat of arms, “L’Union fait la force” [Unity makes strength]. The French section congratulates the French club for its efforts and looks forward to next year’s events. !During the month of July 2014, Dr. Eilderts joined with Dr. Serchuk as co-director of the Southern in Paris program. For this trip, there were a total of 11 students, of which nine were enrolled in French. Six of those students were awarded scholarships from the Student Government Association, and one student was awarded one of the two prestigious Cubeta Memorial Scholarships. Below, please read some of the impressions students had of la ville lumière: Kate Lis (Class of 2014, Elementary Education and Liberal Studies) remarked on the differences

FRENCH SECTION NEWS

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in the pace of life in Paris, writing, “The busy yet relaxing atmosphere of Paris is a wonderful change in pace. At home everything is fast paced; and in Paris people are busy, but they know how to relax and just take life in. Some of us have been going to the Seine to just sit and talk which is something that would never happen back home… I am going to take what I have learned from Paris with me forever.”

Ashley Dambowsky (Class of 2014, Theater) shared her enthusiasm for the city as well as its impact on her when she expressed, “Every single step you take the city has something to offer you. You never think that you would want to go out and explore while it is raining for days straight, but you would be surprised. It is almost as if Paris pulls you in until you have experienced every last drop. It is amazing how much I have

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been taught so much within this trip. You do not think that so much can be achieved within one month until you actually do it.” For Southern in Paris 2015, Dr. Eilderts will direct a group of 17 eager students. For the first time since the original Paris program’s!creation, the 2015 trip will be exclusively a French!program, and nearly all 17 students are majors or minors in French. Dr. Eilderts looks forward to seeing how these energetic students will learn and grow while in this magnificent city. With the departure for Paris quickly approaching, let us end with the words of the Russian-born French author Sacha Guitry: “Être parisien, ce n’est pas être né à Paris, c’est y renaître” [To be Parisian is not to be born in Paris, it is to be reborn there]. Dr. Luke Eilderts, Assistant Professor of French Coordinator of the French Section

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Creative Book Project on Medieval French literature

In Spring Semester, Professor Nichole Gleisner’s FRE 450/505 class on Medieval French literature worked with Special Librarian Tina Re on a creative book project. The class met with Ms. Re four times over the course of the semester in the library and became familiar with SCSU's growing art books collection. They also researched medieval print culture and learned how scrolls and illuminated manuscripts were made and circulated. Students worked on their own version of a medieval book and presented their creative projects at the end of the semester.

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The German program at SCSU remains strong this year with several new courses offered, a very active German Club with many off-campus activities, annual German Book Awards for academic achievement, plans for new virtual courses offered in conjunction with CCSU, as well as an upcoming revised curriculum and new course offerings. With our 100 and 200-level courses remaining strong and very active in the German Club, our program is able to continue offering new courses each semester at the 300 and 400-level. In the Fall of 2014 a World Literature course (LIT 374W) was offered around the theme of “German Epics and Legends” in which students explored a small number of representative texts from the medieval Nibelungenlied to the Grimms’ brothers Fairy Tales to Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (or The Metamorphosis). As a Writing Intensive course students wrote various types of texts and participated in the pilot year of the Multistate Collaborative in Writing. In Spring 2015 a course on 20th-Century German Culture through Film (GER311) was offered which centered on the recent 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and explored: post-World War II Germany, the subsequent division of Germany into East and West, the building of the Berlin Wall, and the consequences of the Berlin Wall on modern 21st-century German society and politics. Again a variety of filmic genres were explored from feature films to documentaries, short films, YouTube videos, news reels, commercials, etc. in an effort to more completely understand East and West Germany and its peoples today and yesterday. In the upcoming academic year SCSU’s

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German program will take part in a new pilot program with CCSU by offering a Virtual German 300W German Composition in conjunction with a CCSU German course. This simultaneous, real-time course will allow students at SCSU and CCSU to merge their!classes through a new and innovative virtual

classroom. A second virtual German course will be offered in the Spring, also in combination with a CCSU German course, but!is yet to be announced. This will be not only an exciting opportunity for SCSU German students, but also one of unique opportunities. As with last year, our German Club is the heart of our program and is a place where students and fans of German culture and language can meet to explore various topics and experience regional German cultural events. This year the student members continued to

present interesting cultural projects about everything from German expressions and tongue twisters to a German amusement park built in an abandoned nuclear power plant (which had never been used). We also represented SCSU German Studies at the annual International Studies Day in the quad by presenting students with Gummibärchen, Bretzeln and the opportunity to write graffiti on our own Berlin Wall. In addition, this year we collected food items for the needy as part of our community outreach during the holiday season. New to the club were several planned excursions to New York City’s Goethe Institute for their Traveling Germany exhibit, to Yale’s Rep Theater for their production of Bertold Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk

GERMAN SECTION NEWS

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Circle, to a trip to the movies to see the newly released Woman in Gold. The success of these trips means many more such adventures lie ahead for the German Club in the coming year. To honor our best students the German program through support from the German Information Center and the German U.S. Embassy presented several students with book awards to recognize their hard work and contribution to our program. The following students were recipients this year: Abigail Wiegand Shelby Cox Samantha Gildea

Jesse Gillis I would like to thank Annemarie Geibel

and Gillian Fox, my fellow German faculty members, who have made this year so successful! Their hard work and dedication to our program and our students cannot be emphasized enough! Finally, thank you to all of our German students, you have made!this year!such a pleasure and we look forward to seeing all of you and more in the fall!

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If you would like to learn more about the German program at SCSU, please contact Prof. Christine Dombrowski at dombrowskic1@southernct.edu. Mit freundlichem Gruss, Prof. Christine Dombrowski

After a very successful term as Graduate Program Coordinator for the MA in Romance Languages, Dr. Pelayo decided to step down for health reasons. During his tenure as coordinator, the credits for the MA were lowered from 37 to 31 and the number of incoming students increased as well as the number of graduates. Seven students graduated in the Spring of 2015. He wants to extend his heartfelt thanks for all the help he received from colleagues Schmitt, Larkin, Dombrowski, Eilderts, and Latorre. There is more fine-tuning work to do for improving the program. Dr. Pelayo takes this opportunity to wish good luck to Dr. Weng, the incoming coordinator of MA in Romance Language Program. !

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ITALIAN SECTION NEWS

To celebrate International Women’s Day, on March 9, 2015 the Italian section hosted the conference “Strong Women Strong Voices” organized and directed by Prof. Lisa Vitale. Dr. Sarah Rolfe Prodan from the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Toronto, spoke on Vittoria Colonna and our own Dr. Larkin, expert on Futurism, spoke on Benedetta Cappa.

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The Italian section is proud of the two new members, Drs. Erin Larkin and Lisa Vitale, who in January 2015 were inducted into the prestigious Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. On this occasion, Dr. Larkin delivered the keynote address. In the Fall 2014, in an effort to bridge the gap between the university and the community, Prof. Palma and Laura Castiglione Parisi, president of the Italian American Historical Society finalized the agreement for students of Italian to volunteer at the society headquarter in New Haven. As a result, throughout the academic year, Deanne Scotto and Adam Cleri lent their expertise in organizing historical documents and artifacts that the society holds. The fourth edition of the SCSU Tuscany Summer Program in Montepulciano, Italy, will take place this year from June 29-July 31. A group of seven students will be spending a month living in the medieval town of Montepulciano (Siena). The students will be studying language and literature while immersed in the local culture. Under the guidance of Professor Palma, program director, they will also spend three days in Rome, where they will live in the Trastevere historic district. Students will also visit Florence and Siena. Participants in the last three editions have enthusiastically praised the program, citing its academic rigor in a relaxed environment fused with the fun of adventure and self-discovery. In Montepulciano, which was the backdrop of the

Dr.!Sarah!Rolfe!Prodan!Speaking!to!the!Audience!

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movie New Moon, the students will have access to forty events organized for the 40th edition of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte, including opera, symphonic and chamber music concerts, contemporary dance, theatre,

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jazz and midnight concerts. Finally, the Italian section is proud to congratulate two of its own! Annie Tullo, President of Italianissimi, graduated with a B.S. in Italian and concentration in Secondary Ed.

Annie is currently teaching Italian at East Haven High School. Delanie Cook, who spent the 2013-2014 academic year studying in Italy through the SCSU’s partnership with the Università di Trieste, graduated with a B.A. in Italian. AUGURI! !

SCSU’s TESOL and TAT Program in the K-12 School Districts

SCSU’s TESOL Program is undergoing several programmatic developments at this time: 1. We have just admitted our first “distance” cohort, six Stamford teachers, who will attend the TESOL MS program via video-conferencing technology. We will be making use of SCSU’s newly installed video-classroom, EN B119, and offer synchronous class delivery, via video. Hopefully this will be the first of a series of cohorts serving Stamford public schools. 2. TESOL’s Training for All Teachers Program continues to grow its virtual EL curriculum library. During its full inaugural year, we completed uploading close to 300 instructional units, created by K-12 teachers, who modified the content to make it accessible to language learners. So far, we have had over 13,000 downloads of the units! We grow the library with each offering of the TSL 518 course. To access these units, click on: southernct.edu/TAT 3. The Intensive English Program (IEP) at Southern is designed for international students who would like to improve their English language abilities. The program consists of two 8-week sessions that meet 20 hours a week during fall and spring semesters, and two 5-week sessions that meet for 30 hours a week over the summer semester. We are currently in the process of accepting applications, with hopes to bring in our first cohort of students in spring/summer 2016. For details, please visit our website at: southernct.edu/esl or contact Dr. Jesse Gleason (gleasonj8@southernct.edu) or Dr. Elena Schmitt (schmitte1@southernct.edu).

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SPANISH SECTION NEWS The Spanish Section has had an exciting year of new curricular initiatives, celebrations of student achievements, events, and activities. This fall, the section will launch a new minor in Medical Spanish for Health and Human Service Professionals, the first Medical Spanish program to be offered in the Northeast, and one of only a few programs for future healthcare professionals being offered nationwide. For more information about the minor, contact Dr. Luisa Piemontese (piemontesel1@southernct.edu) or Dr. Cardone (cardoner1@southernct.edu). There is already an active group of medical Spanish students on campus: this year, Dr. Piemontese organized a group of Medical Spanish students and Spanish instructor volunteers to translate at the Connecticut Mission of Mercy (CTMOM) free dental clinic; she also held a Medical Spanish Health Expo this spring where students showcased their work and interacted with attendees in Spanish.

Along!with!the!curricular!initiatives!in!Medical!Spanish,!the!basic!language!curriculum!continues!to!become!more!and!more!innovative.!During!the!summer!of!2014,!and!again!during!the!winter!session!of!2015,!Dr.!Piemontese!trained!seven!instructors!of!our!program!in!the!Silent!Way!approach!to!teaching!beginning!Spanish.!Dr.!Piemontese!is!one!of!very!few!individuals!in!the!world!who!uses!this!approach!to!teach!Spanish!and!she,!herself,!is!one!of!the!few!surviving!trainees!of!the!late!Caleb!Gattegno,!who!created!this!way!of!teaching.!This!past!spring!semester,!five!of!the!seven!trained!instructors!taught!SPA100!using!the!Silent!Way!approach.!According!to!both!students!and!instructors,!the!experience!has!been!overwhelmingly!positive.!Dr.!Piemontese!will!continue!training!instructors!this!coming!summer.!

Dr. Carlos Arboleda has been hard at work preparing for a celebration of the 25-year anniversary of his summer study abroad program in Salamanca, Spain. His enormous contribution to international education will be celebrated this July in Salamanca with university administrators and students from SCSU and Salamanca. Dr. Arboleda has been editing a major publication bringing together writings, photographs and other memorabilia from a quarter century of student trips he has led to the Iberian Peninsula. Congratulations, Dr. Arboleda!

The section continued to provide students, faculty and community members with extraordinary opportunities to learn from and interact with preeminent authors, literary critics and translators. Acclaimed Chilean author, Pía Barros, returned to campus in February to offer SCSU students a flash fiction writing workshop and lecture on literature as a tool of resisting global gender violence. The students who attended the workshop created an anthology of sudden fictions against gender violence, part of a final project for Honors course co- taught by Dr. Tricia Lin and Dr. Resha Cardone. In April, Dr. Rubén Pelayo spearheaded the organization of a spectacular daylong conference to pay tribute to Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author, Gabriel García Márquez, at the year anniversary of his death. Audience members, among them SCSU students and faculty as well as residents from across Connecticut, heard papers delivered by SCSU faculty members and renowned keynote speakers about García Márquez’s influence, talent and importance. Two noteworthy experts on the author’s oeuvre presented as keynote speakers at the

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conference: renowned literary critic, Professor of Hispanic Studies and expert in Latin American narrative, Dr. Aníbal González, delivered a fascinating talk on religion in García Márquez’s oeuvre, and translator extraordinaire, Dr. Edith Grossman, spoke about the process of bring over into English texts by García Márquez and other works of great magnitude by Latin American and Spanish authors, including Don Quijote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes. Dr. Pelayo, who is among García Márquez’s biographers, presented a paper about the Nobel Prize, death and immortality. After the conference, presenters, companions and friends celebrated the homage to García Márquez with a dinner downtown.

The Spanish Club, which Dr. Rodrigo Fuentes has been advising, has been especially active this year. Club members have been meeting twice weekly for regular meetings and

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for the Spanish conversation table, “La Mesa Española”. This year they organized game nights and events celebrating Hispanic Heritage month; they also contributed to the planning and promotion of the Latin American Film Festival,

the Gabriel García Márquez conference, and the Culture Fest, put on by the Multicultural Center. For more information about the Spanish Club, contact Dr. Fuentes at fuentesr3@south

ernct.edu. SCSU’s chapter of Sigma Delta Pi, a

national honor society for exceptional Spanish majors and well as graduate students and professors of Spanish, proudly inducted fourteen new graduate and undergraduate majors this December. Congratulations to Charles Schadlich, Johanna Bolanos, Kevin Menescardi, Claudia Flores, Ivonne Baldi, Raquel Rodriguez Santos, Shayza Villafañe, Daniel Candelaria, Mitch

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Honan, Allessandra Paglia, Nicolette Marcal, Samantha Babin, Waldina Hernández and Paula Valencia. For more information about the honor society, contact the advisor, Dr. Miaowei Weng at weng2@southernct.edu. Hats off to our graduating senior, Allessandra Paglia, who will begin a MA in Spanish at New York University in the fall. Dr. Resha Cardone, Coordinator of Spanish Section

In the fall semester of 2014, Dr. Weng’s film course “Spanish National Cinema” offered a rewarding and enjoyable learning experience to both the students and the instructor. The class focused on how the chosen Spanish films have constructed and presented "Spanishness" at key historical times via different film techniques. At the end of the semester, students produced videos to show their understandings of nationhood of a country with which they are familiar. Here is one of the visual productions, created and shared by Claudia Ahumada and Allessandra Paglia, on their interpretations of the “nationhood” of Colombia - http://tinyurl.com/spanish-cenima. This course has been proposed as a LEP Tier 2 course, to be taught in English.

Dr. Pelayo gave a lecture, “La magia del amor, los horrores de la muerte y otros temas en los cuentos de Gabrirel García Márquez”, in a conference held in Oaxaca, Mexico on July 21st, 2015, when Oaxaca was celebrating a 2-week international event called “La Guelaguetza.” The conference took place at Macedonio Alcalá Theater, a magnificent architectural treasure. Dr. Pelayo was interviewed by a city’s newspaper and a state television station.

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FOREIGN LANGUAGE CERTIFICATION NEWS !

This year has been a year of important and beneficial changes for the Foreign Language Certification program. These changes, both at the state level and within the SCSU School of Education, impact our program positively by ensuring our students graduate in a four-year program well prepared to enter the classroom as world language teachers. In early spring of 2015 the State of Connecticut passed new subject-specific requirements for World language certification by requiring all world language certification applicants achieve a minimum of Advanced Low on both the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and Written Proficiency Test (WPT). Both Dr. Elena Schmitt and myself took part in two day-long workshops which were attended by both public school and post-secondary world language teachers and program coordinators (SCSU and UCONN represented the university programs at these workshops). These workshops were crucial in recommending to the State Department of Education that it increase its proficiency target language requirements to Advanced Low and continue its use of the ACTFL OPI and WPT tests thereby also aligning itself with the accreditation requirements set by NCATE and now CAEP. The second significant change to our B.S. programs comes from a restructuring of the School of Education foundational course curricula consolidating several pre-requisite and foundational courses into a two courses, namely EDU200 and the new EDU316 content. In addition to consolidating coursework, these two courses cover some new content, most specifically in the area of classroom management which has proven to be an area of need for SCSU’s secondary education students. This consolidation will free up 9 credits for our BS students and ensure their ability to graduate in 4 years. A primary focus for the FL Certification program for 2015-2016 will be addressing the support of our students in passing both Praxis Core tests (reading, writing and math) and the ACTFL OPI and WPT. Initial steps were taken this year to address the preparation of our non-heritage speaker students with regards to OPI and WPT. Preparatory workshops were offered both in the fall 2014 and spring 2015 semesters for students preparing for either exam. In addition, a proficiency-specific course of study at the Colegio Delibes in Salamanca, Spain was created. This two or three-week program provides SCSU’s teacher candidates in Spanish the opportunity to take part in an intensive, proficiency-oriented course whose specific goal is to improve students’ proficiency levels in speaking and writing to an Advanced Low level. In addition in June I will be attending a MOPI training workshop which will provide me a better insight into OPI testing and its rating format. From this, I hope to bring back ideas for course assessments, which could be integrated into our 100, 200 and 300-level language courses providing our students with preparatory and model assessments for these two proficiency tests.

For our heritage speakers, the upcoming year will focus on creating a menu of options for preparing, practicing and passing the Praxis Core tests through interdepartmental tutoring or workshops, informational sessions, and resources for the library, to start with. As part of a post-secondary CT COLT taskforce, I have begun working with colleagues from CCSU and Quinnipiac to address this issue both at our respective universities and at the state level.

Through my work with CT COLT and this Post-Secondary Taskforce we have also founded a new World Language Teacher Honor Society through the Council of Language Teachers (COLT) in which we will be honoring and welcoming new graduates and student teacher candidates to our profession. This new initiative is born out of the need to address the extreme WL teacher shortage in CT and throughout the U.S. by creating opportunities to celebrate our profession and visibly demonstrate its importance at the state level and within our programs. In the fall SCSU will be!inducting approximately 15 students to this new Honor Society!

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For)questions)or)comments,)please)contact)Dr.)Jian)Wu)at)wuj4@southernct.edu,)Dr.)Miaowei)Weng)at)wengm2@southernct.edu)or)Dr.)Jesse)Gleason)at!gleasonj8@southernct.edu)

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This past year has been another busy year for the language lab. Helping instructors and students use modern technology to enhance teaching and learning of world languages has continued to be our main mission. Some of the popular tools used in language classes include green screen and iMovie videos, SchoolShape, Lingt, Glogster, Quizlet, Quia, VoiceThread, BB Learn 9 Kaltura Media Tool, Discussion Forum and Wikipages. In our Spring Technology Forum, Professors Dombrowski, Garofolo, Gleason and Yoshikawa joined me in sharing our experiences using these tools. The recording of the forum is available at http://tinyurl.com/2015TechForum. In the past year, we continued to gain experiences in using our iPad labs to provide enjoyable and engaging teaching and learning experiences to teachers and students.

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In the Spring Semester, Professor Piemontese and I got a curriculum development grant for developing a language lab module to practice the production and recognition of sounds in Spanish. The summer lab assistants, Jacci Piscitello and Maria Giugno are working hard with us to complete the project. We are hoping to start using the lab module in Fall semester among Spanish 100 and 101 classes. We are looking forward to working with all instructors and students in the coming year to meet new opportunities and challenges in using technology to enhance, improve and transform language teaching and learning. Dr. Jian Wu, Language Lab Director !

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And I have saved the best for last and that is the news that this academic year 2014-2015 we graduated six student teacher candidates and graduate certification candidates (1 in French, 2 in Italian and 3 in Spanish). Congratulations to all of our graduates!

Rosana Anoh Mozy (French) Laura Falcone Nardi (Italian) Annie Tullo (Italian) Evelyn Findley (Spanish) Laura Morrisroe (Spanish) Allison Sanchez (Spanish) If you are interested in learning more about the SCSU Foreign Language Certification

program, feel free to contact Prof. Christine Dombrowski at dombrowskic1@southernct.edu.

Dr. Christine Dombrowski Foreign Language Certification Program Coordinator

LANGUAGE LAB NEWS